‘Women leadership’ theme inspires many

Patna: The Patna Book Fair, which witnessed footfall of around 7-8 lakh visitors, was dedicated to the women leadership this year with its theme — ‘Stree netritva’. “Women empowerment is a thing of past. This concept was in vogue a decade ago. Today’s women are already empowered. They just need to take charge. This is what we are focusing on this year,” said convener of the book fair, Amit Jha.
However, one can hardly notice corners in the book stalls dedicated to women authors or women-centric books, barring one. There were obviously a couple of book releases of women authors, besides stages and stalls dedicated to women of repute. An entire film festival was dedicated to women, not to forget recital of poems written by prominent Hindi poets Subhadra Kumari Chauhan and Mahadevi Verma. The fair was also inaugurated by prominent women, including Padma Shri Usha Kiran Khan.
But where are the women leaders in books? Only Rajkamal Prakashan Private Limited had a section on ‘Stree Vimarsh’, which had a variety of books from translations like ‘Wajood Aurat Ka’ to those by Indian writers like ‘Mahila Sashaktikaran Dasha aur Disha’ and ‘Aadhi Aabadi ka Sangharsh’.
A stall manager, Rakesh Kumar, said it was nothing special. They have the section every year, only this year they have tried to keep more books on women and those written by new women authors, compared to other times.
Carrying two bags full of books, one Pallavi said she loved the fair as it reciprocated the theme of ‘women leadership’. “We even got rarely-found books on strong mythological women characters from Urmila and Sita of Ramayana to Mahabharata’s Satyawati, put in present context. Besides, you can get all the books of old Hindi writers for your collection, which are rare under one roof. Same goes with the new Hindi writers, whose books are not even found online,” she said, adding there were even good Hindi translations and a variety of options for you to find out the best among them.
There, however, was nothing much for the lovers of books in other languages like English, barring a couple of Urdu book stalls and only one stall dedicating to a few Maithili books. Old timers missed Bengali books.
Jha said earlier that they had a tie-up with Kolkata Book Fair, under which they used to exchange four stalls with each other where Bengali publishers could put up stalls in Patna and vice versa.
However, visitors demanded that the fair should be held twice a year, even as a mother-daughter duo were left wanting for more options on women-centric books, keeping up with the theme. “There’s not even a single book stall dedicated for women. I’m yet to check out all the stalls and hope to get good books on women,” said Manju, a homemaker who had come from Kankarbagh.
Book stall owners said they have to keep all kinds of books from novels to curriculum books to those on competitive exam for different kinds of visitors.
Jha agrees and hence there was no such instruction for the publishers to concentrate on the theme. “As far as the theme is concerned, we have several other platforms, dedicated entirely to the women leadership theme. Our USP is the programmes held during the fair because people buy books online where they get huge discount these days. So, the programmes are based on the theme. This year we have tried to showcase budding women writers whose books have been released this year.”